What's your uname -r? Which particular port and its modified date in its Makefile? The best way is to contact the port maintainer if it's broken.

>> The *.rej file or what?

To fix it by hand, yes, just read the .rej and merge the diffs to the original src by hand. That's exactly what I have done to qmail source all the time when trying to patch it with 15 different patches that conflict one another.

>> is it really worth it to rely on the ports system all the time?

Yes but with make extract and examination of the original src under that work dir.